Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image recognition/authentication system that performs recognition and/or authentication of continuously input images, an image transmission device and an image reception device that constitute the image recognition/authentication system, an image transmission method, and an image transmission program.
Related Art
As an image recognition/authentication system that includes a camera and a server in the related art, there is known an image recognition/authentication system that transmits an image obtained by photographing in the camera to the server, and performs a recognition process and/or an authentication process (hereinafter, referred to as a “recognition/authentication process”) of an object based on the image in the server. For example, there is known an image recognition/authentication system in which a person is photographed with a monitoring camera, detection of a recognition target (face), determination of age or gender, personal authentication, and the like are performed as a recognition/authentication process.
In the related art, continuous images (moving images) are photographed with a camera to generate a plurality of the continuous images, all of the images are transmitted to a server, and the recognition/authentication process is performed on a server side with respect to all of the images (frames) that are received. In this manner, when all of the images are transmitted to the server to perform the recognition/authentication process of the images, a transmission amount of the images increases, and thus a load applied to the network increases. In addition, a processing load of the server increases, and a capacity for accumulating the images received by the server increases. As a result, the cost of the server increases.
In contrast, a technology in which a detection process of a recognition target is performed on a camera side with respect to the plurality of continuous images, and only images in which the recognition target is detected are transmitted to a server is suggested. In this manner, when only the images in which the recognition target is detected are transmitted from the camera to the server, the above-described network load and the cost of the server may be reduced.
Furthermore, as a technology of reducing the network load and the cost of the server, a technology in which the detection process of the recognition target is performed on a camera side with respect to the plurality of continuous images, and among the images in which the recognition target is detected, only the best image is selected and is transmitted to the server is suggested (for example, Japanese Patent Nos. 3727798, 4208450, 4021873, and 4377472). According to this technology, since the number of images to be transmitted from the camera side to the server may be limited, the network load and the cost of the server may be further reduced.